There Were Tears
by Raving-Lunatic
Summary: There were tears. There were so many tears she thought the world would be drowned in the force of their misery...slight RaeRob. Oneshot


There were tears. There were so many tears that she thought the entire world would be drowned in the force of their misery.

There was rain. There was a purifying rain that dusted everything in silver and wished the world renewed.

There were strangers. There were so many strangers. They piled around the dark hole in her heart, climbing in trees and fences and headstones just to see the last remnant of a hero.

If there's one thing people love more than a hero, it's to see him fall.

She clutched the darkness around herself, willing it not to leave her. Her friends were clustered at the edge of oblivion, watching as the insignificant wooden box was lowered past the horizon like a setting sun. Flowers fell after it, throwing themselves to suicide just to die at his feet. Her hatred flamed like a beacon into the dismal scene, and cut her control like a cord.

The flowers burned.

She never heard the startled gasps or dramatic cries of distress. She had already vanished into the wings of her own passion, flying away through the dimensional weaknesses of the world until she reached the safety of her room. But the eerie shadows and weeping masks could not comfort her. Even the dusty tombs of knowledge that lined her walls could not satisfy her need.

The lonely howl of the wind met her ears when she stepped out onto the roof. In the torrent of rain…she could hide her tears.

She remembered the last time she saw him. When he trained alone on the roof at night, the shadows turning his colorful costume into a macabre of blues and blacks. She would watch him, while she feigned meditation: the artful sweep of his body as he moved fluidly from motion to motion. He had always been beautiful and noble, perfect in every way.

She hated him for that.

But she would never forgive him for leaving them, for leaving her.

For the first time in weeks, she cried. Her tears spilled past their respectful barriers, joining the rain and the sky in misery. Her voice howled with the wind, screaming away the silence that had held her captive since the day his smile died.

They came home. They didn't hold it against her.

They found her on the couch, sipping tea, alone in her mind. She had no idea what she looked like. She didn't care. They stared and cooed in concern, each of them too tired to touch the issue that loomed above them like a storm. None of them had the heart to speak his name.

She hated them for that.

The lights could no longer hold her in their boundaries, the forced laughter echoing so deeply inside her that she felt vast and empty. She retreated to the shadows, where the light and playwrights could not find her. She never heard the knocks on her door.

She had forgotten that the rhythm of the ticking clock should have been sweeping second away from her lifetime. She forgot that time existed. She clutched to memories that spanned her spirit like flames. She could not find peace, her sorrow enveloping her in a deepening darkness. She was inconsolable.

In her dreams, when she allowed sleep to take her with it toward restlessness, she saw his face. He frowned, he smiled, he spoke at her command. But her hand always broke through him like smoke and the world would begin to cry. Her life was a misery of rain.

The voices merged inside her head, begging her to leave her tortured sanctuary and eat. Voices that begged her to remember what living was like. But she could not- life had fled her as the roses burned at his feet. Her control was a fleeting desire, cracking the walls around her like broken wires.

She could not hear the screams that crawled from her broken, bleeding lips. She could not taste the blood on her tongue as her teeth cut through again, desperately seeking silence and reform. She would not cry this time. His eyes would not haunt her; their enigma would not seek her out. She would not scream this time when he said her name; his face would not become a demon's in her dream.

She desperately tried to keep the fires from spreading, desperately tried not to breathe when the pain tore through her open heart at the sight of her failure. She hated him for that.

He left her in ruins. She didn't remember the others; their faces were blurs, pictures that melted in the flames. He had departed, left with all of the answers to her questions, with all of the peace in her heart. She hated him. She hated him so much in her love.

And her tears would sift through the ashes that coated her face, her misery blinding until the world was a whiteness that could not be dispersed. She forgot time. She ceased to believe in anything but her broken heart. Perhaps the world was nothing but destruction, her insanity providing a doorway into which her legacy might enter. Perhaps her friends were too heavy with sadness to fight back. Perhaps she had ended the world.

She hated him for that.

She never even heard the voices as they tried desperately to speak with her. She never even realized what had happened. Her grief came like the ocean, swallowing her and carrying her away from the shores of sanity. She wallowed in the waters, rising and falling through the depthless, salty tears. Perhaps one day she would fall out the corners of her eyes and remember. Perhaps one day, her eyes would reopen, and she would see.

"How is she?"

"I'm sorry Star. She's no better."

"I didn't expect anything more."

"…I know."

The alien sits before her old friend, smiling kindly as she takes both limp hands in her own. Her face is weathered by sadness and despair. She had experienced two kinds of death.

She had yet to decide which was worse.

"Raven? Friend, I am here for you. I hope that one day you might hear me. Shall I tell you about today? Yes, Cyborg and I went to a shelter. We helped repair it, from the bombing last week. You remember this, yes? Beast Boy is still in Africa, looking for the man who killed his parents. I miss him dearly. He is the only one of us who still remembers how to smile…but yes, I must tell you. Cyborg and Bumblebee adopted one of the children and…"

As the Tamaranean spills her words in vain, the tears fall gently onto her fingertips, She does not notice this. She has visited Raven everyday for twenty years and every day for twenty years, Raven's tears have fallen on her fingertips. At night, she wonders if they do not stain her skin, spreading the insane misery that has swallowed their long gone friend.

A part of her hopes that Raven still exists deep within the motionless shell that now lives in this empty white room. But a new part of her, the division that grew out of age, realizes that Raven is gone. The future she had once seen with Warp has come to pass, in its own way.

With sadness she cannot bear to face, Starfire finishes her tales. She gathers her purse and coat, the civilian clothes she has become accustomed to wearing. She lowers the hood that shrouds Raven's face.

The face is the same. The eyes are pale and staring, devoid of any life as they cry her spirit away. Her hair is long and ragged, straggling across her ashen brow like serpents. The alien swallows, ignoring the lump that grows in her throat and burns like dying coal.

"Please Raven, if you cannot return here and now, then find me, find me one day when neither of us lives. I will wait for you."

And as she flees from the room, an ocean gathers in the clammy palms of a body that was once a friend.

AN: The death of Robin leads to Raven's insanity and the Titans fall apart. So Warp was right: the future cannot be changed. It can be, of course, but it will still come to pass, in its own way. Really, I just wanted to see what would happen if Robin died. I'll probably do other things like this later. This is a one/shot, I WILL NOT CONTINUE IT. Please don't ask.

We all know they don't belong to me.


End file.
